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Anthropology Politics

That Elusive Utopia

September 8, 2026 110 Comments

We’ve occasionally dipped a toe in the various trans subreddits, marvelling at the inhabitants and their improbable woes, but other bedlamite communities are available.

For instance, we could linger in the mood room of Reddit’s anarchists.

Where questions abound:

Has anyone here ever lived without money? Like, just decided to quit their job and purely lived off either the kindness of strangers or not so legal methods?

There’s a lot to unpack in there, what with the implications of crime and the assumption of some inexhaustible human kindness, but let’s press on. In the replies, deep and radical knowledge may await:

I did, for a little while.

My partner would go out and dumpster dive, and I would forage and garden, that was our “grocery shopping.” I knew where to find fruit and wild vegetables. It took about a year to learn what was edible in the area.

A year of hit-and-miss. Bodes well for the digestive tract. And yes, the thrill of other people’s bin contents has been mentioned here before.

We started viewing people’s garbage as an inventory to draw whatever we needed from. Our dwelling place looked abysmal, but functioned.

Not really selling the lifestyle, I fear.

Living free brings out a wild, animalistic side of the human brain that most people aren’t accustomed to.

Living free. In other people’s bins.

It got hard to get along with the rest of the world around us. I still worked a job as a fry cook

So not entirely liberated from those capitalist shackles, then.

and my partner got into a fight with one of my coworkers.

I’m sure it wasn’t due to any maladjustment.

They also fought with our neighbours who were my friends.

I truly miss the experience, but I believe it was too much for my ex to handle and it accelerated their mental health issues.

Okay then.

Other enthusiasts offer their hard-won wisdom:

My record (for a year) is around $600. Squatting, dumpster/Papa Murphy’s at closing time. I had a company phone from my old job so no bill. They found out eventually but I had free service for a few years lol.

The word is thievery. Lol.

Sold art for money,

However,

not a lot.

And then there’s this guru of the alternative:

I spent several years trying to live in rejection of capitalism; I squatted, I hustled, I did commercial burglaries and retail thefts, dumpster dove, lived on the kindness of others, but money usually reared it’s ugly head one way or another.

It’s all kindness, kindness, burglary.

But it’s earning a living that’s ugly, you know.

Readers with a taste for dissonance and convolution will find much to chew on.

Update, via the comments:

EmC quotes this,

the kindness of others

And adds,

Company phone from my old job – theft.
Squatting – theft.
Commercial burglaries – theft.
Retail thefts – theft.

It is worth noting the extent to which this supposedly heroic “rejection of capitalism,” all this awfully pious “life without money,” does seem to depend on freeloading and thieving from others. Specifically, from those who don’t regard earning a living, supporting themselves and their families, as a vice. Some kind of unendurable indignity.

Also from r/Anarchy101:

Assuming that the landlord-tenant relationship has no future in an anarchist world, how might a couple thousand anarchists decide who lives where?

Decide.

“If you live there, it’s yours,” says one participant.

At which point, a psychological profile may become apparent.

Continue reading
Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Travel

Offering Relief

September 6, 2026 109 Comments

Or, Scenes From Modern Britain, a possible series:

We’re trialling a calm space at Ealing Broadway station for four weeks 💙

From today, you’ll find a quieter space for customers who may benefit from a calmer environment during their journey.

What we learn from the trial will help us understand how we can make our network… pic.twitter.com/mRFiD2vtvM

— TfL (@TfL) September 4, 2026

The purpose of the magnificent facility seen above, a “compact sensory support space” sited at Ealing Broadway station, is to “make public transport in London fairer, safer, more inclusive”:

The low-stimulation space provides customers with a place to pause and reset during their journey.

“The aim of the pod,” we’re told, “is to provide… a dedicated, low-stimulation space where customers can pause and take a moment away from some of the noise and activity of the station.”

And what’s more,

It’s also designed with easy-to-clean surfaces.

Which possibly hints at the actual uses to which said pod will most likely be put.

The possibility that any emotional fatigue among passengers may be due to particular kinds of “noise and activity” – say, increasingly routine aberrant behaviour and public indecency – does not appear to have been pondered.

Needless to say, a lively thread ensues.

Update, via the comments:

Mags adds,

Or they could just deal with the ferals and fare dodgers instead.

A sentiment echoed by Malc,

In Japan every train and station is a calm space.

One could, I think, argue that if TfL directed their efforts to more obvious targets, then the weirdly small calming huts might not be felt necessary.

One might even view the creation of glorified dog kennels for stressed commuters as a kind of displacement activity, a symptom of a broader malaise. A way to not look directly at the actual problem. Which might entail all kinds of other inklings.

It seems likely that if passengers are feeling unnerved or unsafe, and in need of momentary calm, that may have quite a lot to do with the fact that their daily commute can entail encounters with people openly smoking crack on the Tube, or people vigorously shagging on a moving bus, or vibrant individuals enlivening train platforms via the medium of machete fights.

But hey, let’s have more random uselessness instead. The bizarrely ineffective seems very much in fashion.

Via Tim Newman.

Readers will, of course, recall Transport For London’s previous efforts at uplifting its customers.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Continue reading
Reading time: 2 min
Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (832)

September 4, 2026 163 Comments

It’s his surfboard now, baby. || Big shaking booty. || Boof. || On buying a computer, 1980s. || Mr Reubens has 600 banjos, 1979. || On Columbo and creating intrigue without mystery. || Rotation detected. || What do drugs do? (1971) || So how was your day, dear? || Colour counter. Less than 50 is unacceptable. || Tastes like chicken. || Incoming. || Detection detected. || We’ve all done it. || Sci-fi franchise convergence. || Diverging values. || Divert auxiliary power to the filter. || Tony Hancock in The Impersonator, 1959. || More than a hanging flap, you know. || Grip strength confirmed. || Passing piglings. || The progressive retail experience, parts 755, 756, 757, 758, 759 and 760. || Place in food chain negotiation. || Scenes of shouting, tugging and bodily fluid. || And finally, a project for the weekend.

To enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions, comment editing, upvotes, custom avatars, and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page and click register. It’s free and quite painless.

For additional rumblings, follow me on X.

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Reheated

Reheated (135)

September 2, 2026 92 Comments

Because some things bear repeating, a few items from the archives:

Our Betters Solve Our Problems.

A “non-binary” barista opines.

“Now that I think about it, like, I’m more qualified than a cop to come deal with half the situations that we would call them for,” says our coffee-serving, police-defunding “they/them, 22.”

“I’m a Starbucks barista at a drive-through,” says they. “I’ve de-escalated situations with people with guns… I’ve cooled shit down faster and better than a cop could.”

Readers are welcome to share clips of lively scenes to test this rather boastful hypothesis. It would, I think, have the makings of a compelling reality TV show. With preening, mouthy woke-lings encountering the realities they’ve so carefully ignored.

The subsequent tears and meltdowns could constitute a drinking game.

But Paying Attention Is Hard.

Mathematics is “saturated in whiteness.” Selfish inadequates hardest hit.

Throughout the paper in question, the term “brilliance” is deployed no fewer than seventeen times, as if it were some obviously inherent, pre-existing attribute – of students who can’t be arsed to study, who don’t pay attention in class, who undermine the efforts of others, and whose grades, as a result, leave much to be desired.

Even more frequent is use of the term “whiteness,” an alleged phenomenon on which the paper is premised. Though readers in search of some clear and convincing definition, or some compelling evidence of its existence, may find their hopes dashed. We are, however, assured that “whiteness” is something that gets in the way of black students “maintaining their Blackness.”

Readers will note how any feelings of incompetence and not being welcome are immediately blamed on external causes, on some ectoplasmic “whiteness,” that Befouler Of All Things. As if such feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with the choices and behaviour, and the personal shortcomings, of the students themselves.

Instead, Dr Jasien and her colleagues expect the teaching of mathematics to be driven by the goal of “healing… intellectual trauma,” by paying “attention to the minds and bodies of students.” The students being, it seems, much less obliged to pay attention to anything beyond themselves.

And so, we’re told that “exclamations” and “cacophony” are “to be both expected and valued.” Because when you picture a maths classroom and people getting to grips with differential equations or vector calculus, the first thing that springs to mind is the word cacophony.

May Contain Drama.

Culture for the implausibly delicate.

Readers will doubtless recall the Chichester Festival Theatre warning patrons that its production of The Sound of Music, one of the most famous and widely-seen musicals in the world, would contain references to Nazis. Which, for some, would apparently come as a surprise…

So, to recap. Students must now be forewarned that Macbeth, a somewhat well-known tale of murder, includes scenes of blood and guilt – sorry, “psychological trauma.” And that Romeo and Juliet, one of the most famous tragedies in all of literature, contains, er, tragedy.

The modern sensibility, then, the approved outlook on things, is one in which we are to view cross-dressing perverts striding into schoolgirls’ changing rooms as in no way provocative or untoward, and regarding which one mustn’t bat an eye, while simultaneously trembling at the prospect of Shakespeare’s The Tempest containing dramatic approximations of bad weather.

A mindset in which almost any dramatic work that predates Instagram must now come with spoilers. Which does rather appear to defeat the object.

Our Betters Make Plans.

The World Economic Forum’s Ida Auken wants to correct your primitive lifestyle.

“You don’t even need to know the neighbour to get into his car,” says she. “It’s much more fun to share.” Because having neighbours and strangers, people you don’t know, taking your car, apparently at random, would be terribly progressive and super-convenient, and “fun,” and “not annoying.”

Says Ms Auken, “I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.” All these things, these beastly capitalist products, would be “free.”

And not yours.

For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Continue reading
Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All

The Thought Process Escapes Me

September 1, 2026 65 Comments

From the Maltese town of Sliema, scenes of vibrant door-knocker relocation:

The Mayor of Silema, a small town in Malta, has appealed for witnesses after a man stole his door knob.

What kind of person goes around stealing door knobs?! pic.twitter.com/52iKgeOHia

— Rare | ♻️🇬🇧 (@RareRestore) August 31, 2026

The gentleman, whose identity has not been disclosed, is, it turns out, involved in “other ongoing court cases.”

Update:

Update:

Our aspiring knob engineer returned to pinch the other one, thus completing his set of stolen knockers. pic.twitter.com/TU4buTaSBH

— Rare | ♻️🇬🇧 (@RareRestore) September 1, 2026

The above now seems weirdly close to a comedy sketch.

Via EmC.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.